Guns, Germs, and Steel Summer Reading Essay

Prologue
1. Summarize Yali’s question. This requires mentioning race, intelligence, and development of technology. Yali asks "why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" What Yali is asking is about the origins of inequality between countries and societies in the world. He wants to know why people of European descent are rich and powerful while people like him lack wealth and power. He is questioning the issues of race and technology. He wants to know if there is something "wrong" with non-white people that make them unable to be as advanced technology as white people. 1. 2. Summarize the three…show more content…

12. What technological advancement (and give the date) was necessary for the colonization of New Guinea and Australia. Watercraft was the advancement that helped colonize New Guinea and Australia, the fact that Australia and New Guinea were populated this long ago proves that people had watercraft. Boats were needed because people would have to have crossed deep channels to get to Australia and New Guinea. The widest of these would have been at least 50 miles across. Colonization in Australia and New Guinea was sometime between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago. So that would be the date for the innovation

13. What theory does Diamond propose for the disappearance of mega-fauna in Australia/New Guinea? He argues that the disappearance of the animals was due to human action. The main cause of the disappearance of these animals was the appearance of hunter-gatherers to New Guinea. Diamond argues that the mega fauna of New Guinea had evolved in an environment that was without any humans. Thus, they did not adapt for surviving once humans came to New Guinea. Diamond so, he argues that the animals disappeared because they were unafraid of people and were then killed when people came to New Guinea.

14. What mega-fauna existed in the North America prior to 11,000 B.C. (for more information on this topic, watch what Killed the Mega Beasts? on the Discovery Channel.
There were elephants, lions, cheetahs, as well as other species

Related Documents

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies endeavors to answer a simple but vastly complicated question of how did certain people develop useful items, or “cargo” as Yali, the man who asked the original question, worded it, while other people did not. According to Diamond, while the developments immediately preceding interaction among groups of people is what decides the outcomes of the interactions, it 's where the people come from, their environment, that ultimately…

Guns, Germs, and Steel
Chapter 1: “Up to the Starting Line”
1. When did the history of humans begin?
Around 50,000 years ago. “Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago...” (Page 39)
2. Humans developed on what continent?
Humans developed in Africa. “…, indicates that the earliest stages of human evolution were also played out in Africa.” (Page 36)
3. The Giant Leap forward occurred when?
Around the time human history started, 50,000 years ago.
“Human History at last took off…

An Examination of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Yali posed an interesting question. Why did Europe come to dominate
the rest of the world after 1500? Jared Diamond, in his book Guns,
Germs, and Steel, concludes that geography is the defining factor in
all of human history. While some people may disagree with his
conclusion, that is only because it might not seem to take individual
choice into consideration, which makes a person feel uncomfortable to
say…

Guns, germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a Pulitzer Prize winning book. It’s a 1997 book written by the author Jared Diamond who teaches geography and physiology at UCLA. Around the same year it had won the Pulitzer Prize, the book won the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. Guns, Germs, and Steel tries to explain to us how human history was shaped and offers insight into human foundations and success. Geography plays a crucially vital role in determining success. Jared Diamond revolved…

Khiree Cross Ap Summer Reading Assignment
The Awakening By: Kate Chopin
July 18, 2013
Part One
The setting of The Awakening so far is in the Grand Isle, a popular place for a summer vacation where wealthy people go. The Grand Isle is a spot where all the wealthy Creoles, from New Orleans, go for the summer to relax, and have fun. The time setting seems to be in the early 1900s because of the things they do and the lack of technology. The husband of Edna, Leonce, go away on a trip and on this…

was on. I open my booklet with a bit of uneasiness, and begin reading the prompt. “Writing Situation: Many schools require student to read books for all the core subjects over the summer break to improve their reading and learning skills your school has a committee that is considering whether summer reading should be voluntary or required for students. Directions for writing: Write a letter to convince the committee that summer reading for high school students should be voluntary or required. Use…

The book Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, starts off with Yali’s question about why some places are more developed and have more resources compared to others. The essence of this book is based on Diamond’s thesis he claimed: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves"(Diamond 25). Diamond tries to explain the cultural development on few societies at different…

Summer Reading Assignment
The novels The Loved One, and Endurance can both easily be related to my life, and the world that I live in today. Each of these stories has a meaning that is timeless, and contains morals that can never be dated. Each story has something to offer the reader on many levels. It may teach a lesson, reveal a truth or just simply entertain. Out of these stories I will make a connection to one or more of my personal experiences, a text-to-text connection, and a connection between…

Jared Diamond, a geography professor and the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was asked a question posed by a native, Yali, to the island of New Guinea. Why do some people have “cargo”, meaning material goods and other useful items, but others did not? This simple question had such complex possible answers and Diamond attempted to create his own. According to Diamond the environment where societies initially started evolving was the main factor that decided whether…

Guns, Germs, and Steel
This movie was very interesting and informative about how civilizations developed and thrived. The narrator of the movie, Jared Diamond, has been studying evolution of humans for 30 years and based his studies in New Guinea. While there, he was asked the questions he has been trying to answer for years. A young man named Yali asked him, "Why you white men have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little". He noticed that the white men had so much more material…